Episode Name:BigtimeAir date:7/28/2013Summary:The second season begins with Carrie and Al joining the Major Crimes Section of the NYPD to work the city's highest-profile cases. Their first investigation is a child kidnapping that brings back hurtful memories for Carrie and makes her wonder if a move from Queens to Manhattan was the right one for her.

Poppy Montgomery stars in "Unforgettable" as Carrie Wells, a woman with Marilu Henner Syndrome, which is to say that she has absolute and total recall over every moment of her life. Actually, I take that back. There's one day she doesn't remember, but it's only the most important day of her life, so no biggie.

This particular memory condition has obvious advantages for Carrie. Back in the day, she was the best darned detective in all of Syracuse. But her inability to put anything in the past caused her to flee that successful job and boyfriend Al Burns (Dylan Walsh) to move to New York City, where she makes a living bilking underground illegal card games.

Then, one day, a series of coincidences transform Carrie into a CBS procedural. A woman in her apartment building is murdered and Carrie just happens to have visited her days before, making her a walking crime scene photo. Then, because it isn't convenient enough that Carrie's the only one with the intellectual reserves necessary to solve her neighbor's murder, the detective assigned to the case just happens to be her old Syracuse boyfriend, the one man in New York City who wouldn't require any convincing that Carrie's gifts are both real and a viable way of helping to solve a crime.

Is "Your honor, I have Marilu Henner Syndrome" a legitimate way to get your memory submitted in court as evidence? Presumably "Unforgettable" will have to deal with that in future episodes. But a bigger concern is how episodes will function when every single plot point -- including her escape from a potentially sticky situation at one of those underground gambling dens -- can't hinge on Carrie having first-hand, present knowledge that would take advantage of her memory. It would be a particularly bleak and depressing drama if this memory were a blessing, but the corresponding curse was that she could only solve murders if she previously knew the victim. Then CBS could have called it "Tragic Memory Dead-Friend Girl." As it stands, the pilot already conflates, or at least ignores the distinctions between, Marilu Henner Syndrome and eidetic memory, which will leave many viewers perplexed as to what superpowers Carrie possesses and what her limitations might be.